WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats dismissed the Bush administration's plan for voluntary cuts in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions as "baloney" Thursday and said it will not help slow global warming.
The White House plan depends on U.S. companies to voluntarily curb industrial emissions of carbon dioxide and links reduction targets to American economic growth. Democrats prefer a mandatory approach that dictates specific cuts.
President Bush withdrew the United States last year from the international Kyoto treaty that aims to cut heat-trapping emissions, saying it was too costly to the economy.
James Connaughton, chairman of the White House's Council on Environmental Quality, told the Senate Commerce committee that the administration's voluntary plan would reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions relative to the size of the American economy by 18 percent over the next decade.
But Democrats expressed skepticism. They said the Bush plan was based on cutting the amount of emissions emitted per dollar of economic output, which would not reduce total U.S. emissions. "This is a myth and we're going to expose it," said Democrat Sen. Barbara Boxer of California, referring to the White House plan. She added, "It's baloney."
Connaughton acknowledged the administration's proposal would slow the growth of U.S. emissions, not reduce them. "Greenhouse gas emissions will rise under our approach, there's no question about that," he told the Senate panel.
13 PERCENT JUMP
The National Wildlife Federation, for instance, said in a report released Thursday that the administration's plan would result in an 13 percent jump in U.S. emissions in the next decade.
The United States has only 4 percent of the world's people but produces 25 percent of global greenhouse emissions that are linked to climate change and health problems like asthma.
Democrat John Kerry of Massachusetts, who chaired the hearing, said the administration was not doing enough to reduce emissions and fight global warming. He criticized the administration for claiming the science on the cause of global warming was unclear and using that as an excuse for not tackling the problem. Kerry asked how the United States could ignore the position of the European Union, Japan, and more than 100 other countries that have endorsed the Kyoto treaty. "What do they know that we don't?" asked Kerry, who is seen as a Democratic candidate for the 2004 presidential election.
Connaughton said the Kyoto treaty would have cost the U.S. economy up to $400 billion and caused the loss of 4.9 million job to comply to with the accord's requirements. Democrats said the United States should have participated in the treaty so it could refine and change the troublesome provisions in it.
WHITE HOUSE REPORT
Connaughton and other administration officials appearing before the panel were also grilled on the recent White House climate change report sent to United Nations. The report said human activities — from driving automobiles to operating power plants and oil refineries — produced greenhouse gas emissions that were the primary cause of global warming.
Connaughton defended President Bush's dismissive-sounding comment that the report was nothing more than a product of the federal bureaucracy. "The fact of the matter is the report was produced by the bureaucracy," he said. The report was written with input from several agencies and cabinet departments, including the Environmental Protection Agency.
However, EPA Administration Christine Todd Whitman said last month that she never saw the report before its release and did not know it was posted on the agency's Web site until the media reported on it. The Senate panel wanted Whitman to testify and rescheduled the hearing twice to accommodate her, but the White House said she would not be able to appear.
The White House report laid out possible global warming side effects for the United States, including higher sea levels for coastal cities, more wildfires in the Southwest, and less snow-cover in the Rocky Mountains and Alaska. John Marburger, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, testified the computer models used to predict weather conditions years into the future were unreliable and gave much credence to the report's conclusions.
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